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The message of the very measured strikes on Syrian chemical weapons sites in response to Syria’s chemical attack last week, is that the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and France do not want to get further involved in the Syrian conflict.

President Donald Trump frequently scorches the last three presidents for leaving him a nightmare scenario on North Korea: the threat that the isolated state could soon deliver a nuclear weapon directly to the US mainland.

But as a thaw takes hold ahead of the first North Korea-South Korea summit in a decade, Trump could be about to be dragged down the same frustrating, illusory and inconclusive diplomatic path as his predecessors.

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North Korea has cunningly outmaneuvered the United States and has achieved another ‘victory’, with strategic implications for the Great Power dynamics of the System, not only on the Korean peninsula, but also at a global stage.

The System – consisting of interacting societies (states) and communities, and their interactions with the environment on which they depend – increasingly resembles a global network of connected ‘critical issues’; issues between states and/or between communities that are on the verge of escalating into open conflict; war in the case of issues between states.

Because of the connection – linkage – between issues (because for example, the issues involve the same rival states), the escalation of a particular critical issue into war, can trigger a connected critical issue to also develop into open conflict.

Depending on the structure of the network of connected critical issues, a single incident can cause a chain-reaction, and cause a systemic – that is a global – war.

The moment the network of critical issues spans the System, the System is in a critical condition and is highly susceptible for a systemic war. In case the System is critical, a single – even small – incident can trigger a massive response, a systemic war.

The start of the First World War (1914-1918) – the third systemic war – shows how this mechanism works: The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 28 June 1914 – a relatively ‘small’ incident – produced a systemic response.

It is also possible to compare the network of critical issues with ‘connected’ domino tiles, in which a domino tile represents a critical issue: When a domino tile falls, it sets in motion a chain reaction.

My research shows, that the System produces war cycles, which have a typical (similar) life cycle: Initially, following the implementation of a ‘new’ international order, the System is still able to regulate tensions and to solve issues between states. However, at a certain point in time – when the tipping point of the international order (relatively stable period) is reached – the capacity of the international order to regulate tensions and solve issues becomes problematic: instead of tensions being released and issues being solved, they accumulate in the System. This ‘regime’, I refer to as the high connectivity regime of the relatively stable period (international order).

During the period 1495-1945, the System (with Europe as its dominant core) produced four accelerating war cycles, that show this typical behavior.

At present, data-analysis shows that since 2011, the System is in the high connectivity regime of the fifth – first global (1945-….) – war cycle. The System is now developing a network of critical issues, which increasingly spans the (now global) System.

Criticality of the System – the collapse of the current international order (United Nations) is just a matter of time.

The United States’ latest misguided decision – to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – adds more tensions and another domino tile to the already fragile System. A domino effect has become more likely. In the next article, I will discuss this issue in more detail.